Many health benefit plan providers and retail pharmacies now offer their clients the option of obtaining prescription drugs by mail. Mail order pharmacies ship prescription drugs to a client's home so the client is not required to visit a pharmacy and to fill a prescription in person. For clients with chronic conditions or other conditions that require maintenance drugs, a mail order prescription program is an attractive benefit because it is more convenient for the clients and typically less expensive than obtaining prescription drugs at a neighborhood pharmacy. For many drugs, clients have the option of purchasing a drug fill in a 60-day or even a 90-day supply at a lower cost than a 30-day supply.
Many mail order pharmacies use automated systems and dispensing lines to process and ship a high volume of prescriptions on a daily basis. Depending upon how the technology is implemented and deployed within a mail order pharmacy, a substantial number of steps in the fulfillment process may be automated and the need for human intervention minimized. Mail order pharmacies operated in the US, like their neighborhood counterparts, must be licensed in a state and are subject to numerous rules and regulations established by the licensing state's board of pharmacy.
The present invention is directed to a bottle or vial conveyor system and process. The present invention relates to an integrated bottle capper system for providing standard (“non-safety”) caps and safety caps on the same conveyor line. The preferred embodiment of the present invention allows for a more efficient and faster automated system allowing greater throughput. More particularly, the preferred embodiment of the present invention includes a sensor along the conveyor line for checking to determine whether the right cap is on the bottle. If the right cap is not on the bottle, the system is configured to divert it from the conveyor line to a reject holding queue.